Friday 23 December 2016

Happy New Year!

The Folk Choir had a year of great singing in 2016 and we are looking forward to another one in 2017. Here is our lovely new poster!

Wednesday 2 November 2016

Summer term and a packed November!

Term Dates
Summer term: 3 November - 15 December (7 weeks)

Flying Fiddles and Soaring Voices 2016 - Sunday 13 November
Our end of year concert in collaboration with the Brisbane Celtic Fiddle Club (who practise in the same room as us… spooky), will be at Red Hill Community Sports Club on November 13. There will be a gold coin afternoon tea and the bar will be open. It will be beautifully relaxed and the music will be great, so please share the poster with everyone you know!

There are lots of things happening in November - a Ceilidh for St Andrew's Day, Cloudstreet in concert, and our friends the Black Bear Duo in concert. Here are some posters...








Wednesday 21 September 2016

Folk Choir at the PeerSing, and our end of year concert! Still a whole term ahead, too.

Flying Fiddles and Soaring Voices 2016 - Sunday 13 November
Our end of year concert in collaboration with the Brisbane Celtic Fiddle Club (who practise in the same room as us… spooky), will be at Red Hill Community Sports Club on November 13. There will be a gold coin afternoon tea and the bar will be open. It will be beautifully relaxed and the music will be great, so please share the poster with everyone you know!

Term Dates
This term finishes: 6 October
Special Peersing practice: 20 October
Peersing: 22 October
Summer term: 3 November - 15 December (7 weeks)

Saturday 2 July 2016

The Folk Choir's Winter Term, 30 June - 11 August.


Spite winter with soup and songs!

The Folk Choir has a great sing on Thursday nights. For Winter, we are also having a pot of hot soup on the go so you can come straight from your busy life and be nourished. This week we had pea, pumpkin and potato soup for a gold coin donation at 6.30, and singing from 7.15pm.

The full 7-week term is $84, or as usual you can just attend casually for $15/night. We are at the Red Hill Community Sports Club, 22 Fulcher Road, next to the Broncos.

We'll be singing some short, satisfying stuff, learning some new two-part songs and practising the lovely and challenging songs from early in the year.

This week we started on "Hard Times", Stephen Foster's song written in 1854. Miserable lyrics, sung cheerfully!



Thursday 21 April 2016

The Folk Choir in Concert!

On Friday 22 April, The Folk Choir is performing a set of our songs as the support act to John Thompson's new show. We are very excited to be performing, and all the details are on the flyer below.
Censors, Conscripts and Queensland (Songs and Stories from John Thompson), supported by The Folk Choir. 7pm, Friday 22 April, 2016, at the Red Hill Community Sports Club, 22 Fulcher Road, Red Hill, Brisbane. Tickets at the door, $15/10. Bar open, and supper available.


Wednesday 24 February 2016

Week Three - Anderson's Coast

This term we are starting a new song every two weeks, and working on it over the subsequent weeks. This week we enjoyed learning the chorus of our second song for the year, John Warner's beautiful "Anderson's Coast".

The song tells the story of a band of convicts who escaped to Victoria from Van Diemen's Land. Here is an excerpt from the sleeve notes of Cockersdale, who have recorded the song:
Anderson's Coast concerns of a group of convicts who escaped Van Diemen's Land in a stolen ship, only to be wrecked by the notorious Bass Strait waves on the Gippsland coast (in Victoria). The explorer Strzlecki and his small band stumbled out of dense rainforest and encountered the marooned men. Strzlecki would probably have perished had it not been for his Koori guide Charlie Tarra and this group of convicts who led him to Anderson, a pioneer settler who ran cattle on the South Gippsland coast. Apparently the convicts were pardoned for their contribution to the explorer's survival. 

John Warner is a well-known Sydney songwriter, and here is a paragraph I've pinched from his own website: 
John Warner is a Sydney-based, traditional-style singer and poet/songwriter with a wide-ranging repertoire biased towards chorus songs and songs of history, industry and the environment. John is renowned all over the world for his well-crafted songs - as recent accolades from Gordon Bok and Danny Spooner affirm. Many people have recorded "Anderson's Coast"; and "Bring out the Banners" is sung by Trade Union choirs all over Australia, and also in the UK and Canada. He is an accomplished musician on the 6 and 12 string guitars and also on bouzouki. John has a strong voice, often sings unaccompanied, and is an inventive and sensitive harmony singer.

Read the rest of his illustrious career at www.folkjohnwarner.com.

The version of Anderson's Coast we are singing is based on the memorable arrangement by Nancy Kerr and James Fagan, who will no doubt perform it when they appear at this year's National Folk Festival in Canberra at Easter. Here is a clip of them at Bath Folk Festival singing their version:


We will sing the whole song (in unison) this coming week, and also keep working on Pete Morton's "Another Train", which is sounding stunning already.

Monday 8 February 2016

Week One - Another Train

This term we are starting a new song every two weeks, and working on it over the subsequent weeks. This week we enjoyed learning the chorus of Pete Morton's classic song of hope, "Another Train".

There's another train,
There always is.
Maybe the next one is your's.
Get up and climb aboard another train.

We'll start on the verses next week. Our version of the song has been inspired by The Poozies, who played at Woodford Folk Festival and Illawarra Folk Festival this January. Click on the links to find out more about the band and the festivals.

Below is a youtube link of The Poozies singing Another Train, and also check out the songwriter himself, Pete Morton. That link is his own site, and here's an interview he did on the BBC. They start talking about Another Train at 6:05.


Wednesday 6 January 2016

The Folk Choir starts again on Thursday 4 February!

Welcome to The Folk Choir for 2016, and prepare yourself for delicious singing and great new songs. We start a new year of singing on Thursday 4 February, at the Red Hill Community Sports Club, Fulcher Road, Red Hill (next door to the Broncos). We sing from 7.15pm - 8.45pm.

First term will be quite short, as Easter is early this year and we always take a term break for the National Folk Festival. First term will be seven weeks long, and we will start four new songs and revisit older songs in that time.

Looking forward to singing with you in harmony!

cheers
Nicole